Replace Instead of Quit

I've been toying with the notion for a long time on what the best way to get rid of bad or unhealthy habits.

Most of the things you read in the news of various styles these days is that you need to quit, quit quit! The thing is, quitting is fucking hard. If you are an over-eater, it's difficult to just quit cold turkey. Yeah there are certain people who can and do make it successful but for the average person, that's difficult as hell. I don't think that's realistic, personally.

What I do think is possible, and has anecdotally worked for me and those around me in my life is instead of focusing on quitting, we should focus on replacing. Instead of trying to quit smoking drinking soda, we should replace it with something else. For example, someone drinks 5 sodas a day. A great way to get off of that physiologically is to slowly decrease the amount of soda you are drinking.

Addiction is a hell of a thing because our body loves to get into rhythms. When it gets into a rhythm it goes into autopilot in a real sense. It prefers to not have to think about something. There are plenty of stories of people who are brain dead (literally) from a stroke or something but they have been in a routine for 30 years of getting up in the morning, sitting at the table and eating a bowl of cereal with milk. They finish that and when their autopilot turns off, their body succumbs to the death and they keel over. It's been documented plenty of times by family members, it's pretty scary and fascinating how strong the autonomic nervous system is!

When it comes to quitting these unhealthy things, if you go cold turkey then you are going to be fighting with your body quite a bit. It will send all kinds of addiction withdrawal symptoms at you to try and get you back into the rhythm it wants with the bad choices. It's very easy to slide right back into it then you're not only still addicted but your ego is bruised that you couldn't overcome the issue.

I think this is where replacement strategies are really important! Instead of drinking 5 sodas a day, drink 4 and a half. Dump the last half out and drink half a glass of water instead. Do this for 4 or 5 days and then upgrade. Go down to 4 sodas and 1 full glass of water. Eventually if you keep on going a little bit at a time, your body gets used to the smaller quantity of sugar and caffeine that it's receiving and you can kick the habit entirely.

This was the strategy that worked with my wife when I helped her get off soda. It also has helped me and others with other poor choices and habits. Instead of doing "X" you do "Y" a little bit at a time. Eventually you can get rid of the original habit and replace it with something better!

I recently was able to do this with something in life and I've been really happy with it. I could be doing better with it of course, but just this recent change alone has been a wonderful thing. I am in a better mood having conquered a bad habit I've had for a really long time. I did it with replacement therapy at the core of it!

What about you, have you struggled with quitting something? Have you tried replacement instead of quitting? Let me know in the comments!